Created (Talented Saga) (10 page)

“Yes,” I whispered. “I think I do.”

Pure relief flooded Crane’s features, causing the iridescent blue-black irises to swirl. He cleared his throat loudly before speaking. “If it means that much to you, then Henri may come back to the cottage. But I’m warning you, if he turns out to be a spy, you’ll be answering to Brand.” Crane was at least partially teasing me, but the thought of being at Brand’s mercy made me shiver.

I elected to return to the main cabin after my talk with Crane. I didn’t want Henri to be alone, and wanted him to know Frederick was safe.

The steel flooring of the cabin was uncomfortable and my butt soon went numb. I insisted Henri lie down, and had him rest his head in my lap while I applied a wet towel to his clammy forehead. I relayed the good news about Frederick, and it went a long way towards relaxing him. He slept fitfully for the remainder of the journey. I felt horrible for him. In one week, his entire world had been turned upside down. He’d been hurt rescuing Erik’s family, and then shot in the raid on the station. He had really believed in TOXIC and what they stood for; he was loyal through and through. Yet, his loyalty to the Agency had been usurped by his friendship with Erik. He’d risked his life to help Erik save his family, and he was paying dearly for it. Henri would never be able to go home again, never see his sister, or his parents.

At some point, a young girl with sloppy pigtails and wide-set eyes brought me damp rags and insisted I tend to my feet. In caring for Henri, I’d forgotten how beat up they were. I thanked her, and wiped them clean as best I could manage without jostling Henri. Thankfully, the scratches were all superficial. As long as they weren’t already infected from stepping in so much grossness, I’d heal quickly.

The stop at the induction camps to drop off the refugees was short, and I declined Crane’s offer to inspect them for myself. I knew he only suggested it to allay my fears that the process was unpleasant. Admittedly, I was extremely curious. I was also extremely tired, to the point that even the slightest movement was a chore. Every inch of me, from my eyeballs to my pinkie toes ached with fatigue. Lack of decent sleep was the biggest contributor, but using my talents repeatedly hadn’t helped either.

The little burned boy’s mother thanked me for helping her son before deplaning, and it took every ounce of self-control I possessed not to blather on about how sorry I was that I’d brought the war to her front door.

While Crane talked to the soldiers at the facility, I helped Henri lie down on one of the vacated benches so that he could stretch out. When Crane re-boarded, he handed me a paper bag and two bottles of fresh water.

“You both need nourishment,” he told me.

I hungrily dug into the paper bag and discovered two sandwiches. The meat was from an animal I couldn’t identify and the bread was grainy with an odd consistency, but I devoured mine in three bites, and then drained half my bottle of water. I woke Henri, and insisted he try to eat his meal. He only ate half of the sandwich, which didn’t appear to sit well with him. I worried that maybe I hadn’t cleaned his wound well enough, and infection was already setting in.

It was late afternoon, West Coast time, when we finally landed at the cottage. My bones creaked when I moved, my vision lacked focus, and I was practically sleepwalking, but the moment my scratched feet hit the pebbl
ed driveway, I knew I was home.

Chapter Six

“Talia, thank god you’re alive!” Penny cried, bursting through the front door and flying at me in a blur of bright red hair and pale limbs.

The heaviness surrounding my heart lightened at the sound of her voice. I returned her tight embrace, still finding it hard to believe she was alive herself.

“Penny?!?” Henri exclaimed.

When I turned to look at him, he was pale as if he’d seen a ghost. In a way, he had, I supposed. “You’re … alive?”

“It’s a miracle, I know!” she replied, releasing me in favor of him.

Henri awkwardly returned the gesture the best he could with only one working arm. His torso was still bare except for the gauze I’d wrapped across his chest and injured shoulder. When Penny stepped back, he reached for her again with his good hand, lightly fingering her bright red hair as if checking to make sure she was corporeal and not a hallucination.

“What? ... How? ... They said that …” Henri seemed at a loss for words.

Not that I blamed him. My reaction at seeing her in the flesh that first time had been nearly identical.

“Not that Talia didn’t do a great job patching you up, but I think one of my doctors should take a look at you right now.
I’m sure one of the girls will explain everything after you’ve had some rest,” Crane interjected, steering Henri towards the door. He didn’t protest, but kept stealing glances at Penny over his shoulder.

Penny linked her arm through mine and led me inside the cottage.
I leaned gratefully into her for support, more emotional than physical.

“What happened?” she asked as we walked.
“Brand got back and said you guys had to stop so that Erik could get medical attention, and then Erik and like three other people showed up on a hovercraft. The pilot said something about the Underground station being raided? And then we started to get all this chatter about it. The word on the airways is that there are a ton of casualties, and that both you and Uncle Ian had been spotted! And why aren’t you wearing shoes?” In typical Penny fashion, she didn’t take a single breath. I smiled, the familiarity of it easing a little of my tension.

“How’s Erik?
After I see him, I promise I’ll tell you all I know,” I said.

“Oh my god!
I’m such a bad friend. Of course you can see him first!” She squeezed my arm affectionately.

“You’re not a bad friend, Penny.
You’re the best friend that I could ask for,” I told her, meaning every word of it.

We’d fallen back into our friendship easily.
I’d apologized for exposing her as a Coalition spy and she’d apologized for not coming clean with me. Each of us had insisted the other had nothing to be sorry for. I truly believed she didn’t. Sure, I wished she’d told me who she was and why she was there. And no matter her proclamations to the contrary, I knew she wished I hadn’t outted her as a spy.

Over mugs of orange blossom tea, Penny had told me exactly why she’d been sent undercover at the school.

The Coalition had spies all over TOXIC. From prison guards to the unseen cafeteria staff at school to medics at Elite Headquarters, Crane had eyes and ears nearly everywhere. His spies had watched me and reported their findings to him. So Crane knew Mac kept me close to him, and dating Donavon brought me closer still. He knew Mac had given me a pseudo family, a boyfriend, and a facsimile of a normal life – normal for a Talent, anyway. What Mac hadn’t given me were friends. Besides Donavon, I was close to no one my own age. Crane had thought filling that gap with Penny would prove easy. He’d overestimated how much I cared that it was empty.

Penny told me she’d tried to get close to me while we were both still at school, but despite being almost friendless, I was also almost never alone.
We had none of the same classes, and I spent my weekends with Donavon, and after he’d left to pledge the Hunters, Gretchen and Mac.

The day she’d approached me in Hunters’ Village was fortuitous, Penny had said.
It had been the opportunity she’d been waiting for. She’d been excited she was finally making progress on her mission to befriend me. Once she did, however, she realized convincing me to leave TOXIC wasn’t going to happen. She saw how loyal I was to Mac, and knew I wouldn’t believe her if she told me that Mac, not Crane, had killed my parents.

Instead of scrapping the mission altogether, Penny and Crane had devised an elaborate plan to bring me face-to-face with Crane.
Once I talked to him, they thought, surely I’d see the truth. And, eventually, I had. Just not soon enough.

“Stop, you’ll make me cry,” Penny teased, pulling me back to the present.

I smiled at her, and suppressed the urge to apologize for the umpteenth time.

At first glance the cottage Crane and Penny – among others – called home was an adorable rustic cabin.
Built on the very edge of cliffs that stretched one hundred feet above the Pacific Ocean, the one-level structure boasted an impressive view of the beautiful body of water. The lush redwood forest surrounding the cottage on the other three sides provided protection from prying eyes. Of course, the heavily armed soldiers patrolling that forest also prevented unauthorized individuals from getting too close.

The single above ground level was Crane’s living quarters.
It had a small foyer, a small study to the right of the doorway, a short hallway with three small bedrooms to the left of the doorway, and a ridiculously large kitchen occupying the entire back half of the cottage. In the center of that small foyer was a trapdoor, which led to the first of ten subterranean levels built into the cliffs beneath the cottage like an inverted skyscraper. Those subterranean levels – sublevels – made up Coalition Headquarters.

Penny accompanied me through the trap door, down the metal staircase, through the atrium, to the elevator bank, and finally to sublevel five:
the medical ward. The air in the corridor was chilly on account of it being so far underground. The walls were smooth stone, and the electric lights looked modern and out of place in comparison. I worried about Erik being down here in the drafty space.

Brand stood, surly as ever, outside the door to Erik’s room.
He looked bored until his piercing green eyes caught sight of me – he gave a whole new meaning to the phrase if looks could kill. Despite my exhaustion, I straightened my spine, rising to my full sub-five feet, and met his challenge head-on.

“What, are you guarding him?” I demanded.
“He isn’t a danger to you.”

Brand gave me an exaggerated eye roll.
“No, I’m babysitting him. Ian wanted to be informed the minute his condition changed, so I’ve been relegated to sitting in his room watching him sleep. The doctor is in there now, and he asked me to wait in the hallway.”

“Oh,” I said, the fight going out of me.
“How is he?”

Sympathy flashed across Brand’s face, but it was gone in an instant and I thought I might have imagined it.
“You’ll have to ask his doctor,” he said.

I looked from Penny to Brand.
“Can I go in?” I wasn’t sure since Brand had said the doctor asked him to leave.

“Probably.
I assume you’ve seen him naked, so it won’t be an invasion of his privacy.”

I let the barb go.
I had seen Erik naked and didn’t care if Brand knew it.

“Brand, be nice,” Penny chastised him.
“Go on, Tal. I’ll wait out here,” she said to me.

I slowly turned the knob and pushed the door open, trying to make as little noise as possible.
My fears about Erik being uncomfortable down here were put to rest immediately. The room had the same stone walls as the corridor, but the floor was covered in soft white rugs. A bamboo dresser sat on one wall, a matching desk on another. A comfortable-looking overstuffed couch lined the third. And the fourth wall was entirely glass and overlooked the ocean below. I’d been down to the beach several times since my arrival at Casa de Crane, and knew the exterior of the windowpane was coated with camo spray to make it indistinguishable from the rock face surrounding it.

A dark-skinned man in a white lab coat stood next to Erik’s bed.
He used an electronic pad to record all of the vitals from the monitors hooked up to Erik. The doctor looked up when he saw me, the irritated expression he wore quickly melted into a kind smile.

“Ms. Lyons, I presume?” he said.
His accent was thick, but his English was perfect.

“Um, yeah,” I replied, surprised he’d addressed me by name.

The doctor waved me forward, and I slowly crossed the stone floor to join him at Erik’s bedside.

“Dr. Patel,” he said, offering me his hand.

Tentatively, I shook it. The doctor radiated warmth and caring, and I was immensely grateful that this was the man treating Erik. All of my doctors were cold and impersonal, and I rarely got the impression they cared about me so much as they were fascinated by me. But Dr. Patel was not like that at all.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I told the doctor honestly.

“You as well, Ms. Lyons,” he said, and I got the distinct impression he really meant it, too.

“How is he?”
I nodded my head towards Erik.

The quilt on the bed was pulled down, exposing Erik’s body from the waist up.
His abdomen was so swollen that it puffed out like the bellies of malnourished children I’d seen pictures of. Bruises in various stages of healing colored his chest black, purple, blue, green, and yellow. A thin line of stitches ran through his bottom lip to the point of his chin. A blue plastic cast, identical to the one Cadence wore, encased his right arm from the tips of his fingers to his armpit. Underneath the quilt, there was a huge bulge where one of his knees should’ve been.

Someone had taken the care to wash his hair, and it was shiny and still a little damp, and smelled like pine.
I longed to run my fingers through the thick strands. All the dirt and blood had been scrubbed from his skin, which only made his injuries that much more visible.

“He had a great deal of internal bleeding.
A broken rib punctured his lung. Bones in his arm are broken, as is his knee cap,” the doctor said matter-of-factly.

I inhaled a shaky breath.
“Is that all?” I mumbled, the words coming out more sarcastic than I’d meant them to.

Dr. Patel gave a short laugh.
“Yes, he has been through quite an ordeal. He has lost a lot of blood, but his body has responded well to the transfusions. I have him sedated right now.” The doctor paused, and I felt the weight of his gaze assessing me. “Ms. Lyons, how long was Mr. Kelley imprisoned?” he asked finally.

“Around a week,” I said absently.

“Was he injured prior to his imprisonment?”

“No,” I said, growing uneasy.
“Why?” I tore my gaze away from Erik to appraise the doctor.

“The breaks to his bones do not appear recent.
Judging by the level of remodeling, I would posit the breaks occurred several weeks ago. Even many of his bruises appear older than one week.”

“He’s a Talent; he heals fast,” I said with a shrug like it was no big deal.
Truthfully, I didn’t think it was. Dr. Patel probably just didn’t treat many Talents, so he wasn’t used to our rapid healing abilities.

“No, Ms. Lyons, there is more to it than that,” Dr. Patel replied with a patient smile.
“Being talented, his cells do regenerate more quickly than a non-Talent, but not this quickly.”

“What are you suggesting?” I asked impatiently.
My head hurt and I was growing tired of this roundabout conversation.

“I believe he was given something, a drug perhaps, to help him heal faster.
Nothing came up in his initial blood work, but I have ordered more in-depth testing. I will know for certain shortly.”

“So, what does that mean exactly?
Is the healing drug a bad thing or a good thing?”

“Too soon to tell,” Dr. Patel responded, his words full of false cheerfulness.
“Right now, the important thing is that all of his vitals are strong. I am hopeful he will make a full recovery.”

“Is there a chance he won’t?” I asked.

“As I said, his body has yet to reject the blood transfusions, which is a very good sign.”

“But?” I prompted since there was definitely a “
but.”

“But it is too soon for certainties.
There is still a chance his body will reject the blood.”

“What will happen if it does?”

“I do not believe you need to worry about –”

“What will happen if it does?” I hissed the question through gritted teeth this time.

“He could die.”

Tears sprang immediately to my eyes, spilling down my cheeks before I thought to stop them.

“I have faith, Ms. Lyons. You should, too. The fact he is still alive after what he has been through is a miracle. It would take much less than that for him to pull through.” Dr. Patel placed a hand on my shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. “The best thing you can do for him now is be here. Talk to him. Let him hear your voice, feel your touch. The emergency medics said he called your name on the plane. I cannot imagine he won’t make a full recovery so long as he knows you are waiting on this side for him.”